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Scientific Cruise Meets Perfect Storm, Inspires Extreme Wave Research
An anonymous reader writes "The oceanographers aboard RRS Discovery were expecting the winter weather on their North Atlantic research cruise to be bad, but they didn't expect to have to negotiate the highest waves ever recorded in the open ocean. Wave heights were measured by the vessel's Shipborne Wave Recorder, which allowed scientists from the National Oceanography Centre to produce a paper titled 'Were extreme waves in the Rockall Trough the largest ever recorded?' It's that paper, in combination with the first confirmed measurement of a rogue wave (at the Draupner platform in the North Sea), that led to 'a surge of interest in extreme and rogue waves, and a renewed emphasis on protecting ships and offshore structures from their destructive power.'"
This scientific cruise also proved that the only kind of cruise where nobody gets laid is a "scientific cruise"
I only RTFAs to find out how high the waves were - it turns out they were up to 29.1 meters (95.5 feet).
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Under severe gale force conditions with wind speeds averaging 21 ms a shipborne wave recorder measured individual waves up to 29.1 m from crest to trough, and a maximum significant wave height of 18.5 m.
Outlaw them and put out a bounty (or a Bounty?)
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
The article was published in 2006. How is this 'new?'
look up Schrodinger wave equations and apply them to ocean waves. You will get 30+ meter tall waves with a trough next to the "wall" of water, (the wave is tall and narrow - like a wall). This trough adds to the great difficulty in surviving one of these waves. Ships that are designed to withstand forces of 10 tons/m2 have to content with 10 times that force. I believe there was a study in which someone, (don't remember her name :( ) mapped the entire earth over a two week period and found something on the order of 20 of these waves. Fascinating stuff.
For those looking for more details about this voyage http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/294/
Specifically in 1998, a 120ft wave off the east coast of tasmania http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/124-a-short-history-of-tasman-lows
Rogue waves: Demonstrating yet again that reality is a fascinatingly weird place.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Waves over 20 m (60 ft) tall are actually pretty common in some places. My dad is senior keeper at Triple Island Lightstation, located just off the BC coast. In severe winter storms, the waves will often crest over the square part of the building, which is about 20 m above sea level. This January, one such wave blew in a storm window on the top floor -- several tons of water will sometimes do that. The building stays up because it's constructed with 2 ft thick rebar concrete walls.
Be relentless!
First they had scrub the barf off the deck, then they could work on a paper.
Just sailor's stories and nothing more.
All fanciful tales at best, lies at worst.
This isn't a case of climate change but I hope you don't deny it in general otherwise you are the "cuckoo".
....... it didn't happen!! :D
Climate change is a fact. Ask any* climatologist. Find any* biologist and ask them about evolution while you're at it. Oh and before you argue anything, if you don't have a degree in the field convincing people you know what you're talking about (you probably don't) will be very difficult.
*: except one or two wackos. Most people find it obvious consensus doesn't exists but I think you need this pointed out.
Oh look, one of the oil/coal industry shills pulled their head out of the sand long enough to make a snarky comment.
It's interesting how often myth and legend end up being scientific fact. There has been talk since sailors took to the sea of rogue waves that reached a 100' or more. Science has been confirming these myths in recent years. Most myths have an element of truth in them. On the practical side it's a serious concern since surviving a 100' rogue wave is not something all sea worthy ships can do yet they can face them without warning. I read years ago the theoretical limit was twice what has been recorded so the potential is far beyond the proven fact.
Now scientific papers are titled in 'Could it be?' terms. I thought that was reserved for 'Were the Inkas aliens?' tv shows. At least it didn't end with the 'We may never know' ending.
The paper is from 2006, and describes a wave observed in 2000.
Satellite-based radar altimeters produce a lot of data about wave height world wide, but they don't, apparently, have quite enough resolution yet to see this kind of thing. A view of such waves from above, over a few minutes, would tell us a lot. Is it an intersection of two or more waves? How far does it travel? How long does it persist?
The U.S. Navy has put considerable effort into answering questions like that.
What has fascinated me about freak/rogue waves is that sailors have known about them for decades if not centuries, but scientists were telling them it can't be.
And the reason is badly understood statistics. I've recently read Black Swan, and that gave me a few new concepts to work with, but the basic idea is exactly that: We don't really have a good understanding of statistics and probabilities, especially about extremely low probabilities in big numbers.
Or, as Tim Minchin put it: One-in-a-million things happen all the time.
And it's not just in the oceans. The entire financial crisis was caused by the people in charge taking huge (but low probability) risks, ignoring that once enough people have taken enough of those "low probability" risk, they become very likely to actually happen.
Freak waves are cool because they are in the gray area between the normal distribution and the really freaky - thus they happen often enough that they are rare, but not bigfoot-rare. We can actually study them.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
We have bigger waves in Texas!
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Nice traditional exterior, but sad to see the drop ceiling on the interior. At least the wood floor is original.
My uncle retired as a US Navy Captain. For many years he had two photographs displayed in his house, which he ascribed to Admiral "Bull" Halsey's "second" typhoon, in June 1945. At that time my uncle was an ensign, assigned to a destroyer, and on his first sea voyage.
The two photographs were of a sister destroyer. In the first photograph, all one sees is a giant wave, with the bow of the destroyer sticking out of one side, and the stern sticking out of the other. The middle of the ship, including the masts and superstructure, is submerged and not visible.
In the second photo, taken a few seconds later, the middle of the ship is now visible, but both the bow and stern are now submerged in the wave train. And as a kid, the part that fascinated me the most: You could see an air gap below the middle of the ship, between the ship's keel and the wave trough below.
The book is "The Wave":
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Morris-t.html?pagewanted=all
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I'm surprised I can't get for my boat (or raft) a platform with accelerometers that operates a hydraulic piston to compensate for wave action. It might need some lateral actuator too, as wave motion is circular. But it might not, if the light floats slide along the surface as the piston pushes down on them keeping the heavy inertial payload in place.
Just accelerometers, hydraulic pistons, and DSP. Big bonus points for a device that harvests that energy moving through the site to power the hydraulics.
Really it seems this tech would be cheap by now, a commodity on floating oil platforms and the many working ships, or pleasure craft combating seasickness. If it only compensated for gentle waves in most harbors without storms, it would make aquatic platforms stable most of the time without battening/stowing everything all the time.
--
make install -not war
Why not just hang your boat from a balloon?
No brain, no pain.
I refuse to believe that the US Navy or the English navy were not well aware of rogue waves. there is no ocean on which the US Navy has not spent endless hours, days and months. It would cripple world commerce to actually admit that rogue waves are sort of common. Cruise ship anyone?